The City of Beautiful Nonsense Part 34

Then the smile would creep back again into his eyes.

"Of course--it's a beautiful thing," he would say clumsily--"a beautiful thing."

And when he went home, he would tell the little old white-haired lady how much it had been admired, and they would call back to memory the day when they had bought it--so long ago that it seemed as though they were quite young people then.

So it fell out that this old gentleman of the curio shop in the _Merceria_ came to be known for his seeming eccentricities. People talked of him. They told amusing stories of his strange methods of doing business.

"Do you know the Treasure Shop in the _Merceria_," they said over the dinner tables in London when they wanted to show how intimately they knew their Europe. "The old man who owns that--there's a character for you!" They even grew to making up anecdotes about him, to show how keenly observant they were when abroad. Everyone, even Smelfungus and Mundungus, would be thought sentimental travellers if they could.

It was the most natural coincidence in the world then, that John, strolling aimlessly in the arcades of the Square of St. Mark's that morning after he had left his mother, should overhear a conversation in which the eccentric old gentleman in the _Merceria_ was introduced.

Outside Lavena's two women were taking coffee, as all well-cultured travellers do.

"--my shopping in Kensington----" he heard one of them say, concluding some reference to a topic which they were discussing.

John took a table near by. It is inevitable with some people to talk of Kensington and Herne Hill when abroad. John blessed them for it, nevertheless. There was that sound in the word to him then, which was worth a vision of all the cities of Europe.

He ordered his cup of coffee and listened eagerly for more. But that was the last they said of Kensington. The lady flitted off to other topics. She spoke to her friend of the curio shop in the _Merceria_.

Did she know the place? Well, of course not, if she had not been to Venice before. It was called the Treasure Shop. She had found it out for herself. But, then, it always was her object, when abroad, to become intimate with the life of the city in which she happened to be staying. It was the only way to know places. Sight-seeing was absolutely waste of time. And this old gentleman was really a character--so unbusiness-like--so typically Italian! Of course, he spoke English perfectly--but, then, foreigners always do. No--she could not speak Italian fluently--make herself understood at table, and all that sort of thing--anyhow, enough to get along. But, to go back to the old gentleman in the Treasure Shop, she ought to go and see him before she left Venice. She was going early the next week? Oh--then, she ought to go that morning. He was such a delightful personality. So fond of the curios in his shop that he could scarcely be persuaded to part with them. There was one thing in particular, a Dresden figure, which he had in the front of the window. He would not part with that to anyone. Well--asked such a price for it that, of course, no one bought it.

But would it not be rather amusing if someone did actually agree to pay the price--not really, of course, only in fun, restoring it the next day, but just to see how he would take it? Was she really going next week? Then why not go and see the Treasure Shop at once? She would?

Oh--that was quite splendid!

And off they went, John following quietly at their heels. This old Italian who could not bear to part with his wares because he loved them so much, there was something pathetic in that; something that appealed to John's sense of the colour in life. This was a little incident of faded brown, that dull, warm tint of a late October day when life is beginning to shed its withering leaves, when the trees, with that network of bare, stripped branches, are just putting on their faded lace. However unsympathetic had been the telling, he had seen the colour of it all with his own eyes. He followed them eagerly, anxious to behold this old Italian gentleman for himself, to confirm his own judgment of the pathos of it all.

Letting them enter first, for he had no desire to listen to their dealings, he took his position outside the window, intending to wait till they came out.

There was the Dresden figure the lady had mentioned. Ah! No wonder that he asked a large price for it! They had one just like that at the _Palazzo Capello_. His father had often said that if he could get a pair of them, they would be almost priceless. Supposing he bought it for his father? Would it be cruel to the old gentleman inside? Perhaps, if he knew that it was to make a pair, he would be more reconciled to its loss.

John waited patiently, gazing about him until the ladies should come out and leave the field free for him to make his study--his study in a colour of brown.

Presently the draperies in the back of the window were pulled aside. An old man leaned forward, hands trembling in the strain of his position, reaching for the Dresden figure. John bit on the exclamation that rose to his lips.

It was his father! Had he seen him? No! He slipped back again into the darkness of the shop and the brocades and the tapestries fell together once more into their place as though nothing had happened.

What did it mean? Was it true? With an effort, he held back from his inclination to rush into the shop, making sure of the reality of what he had seen. If it were true, then he knew that his father had not meant him to know. If it were true, he knew what the pain of such a meeting would be.

Crossing to the opposite side of the street, he tried to peer in through the shop door; but there was that clear-cut ray of sunshine on the step, barring the entrance. Only vaguely, like dim, black shadows on a deep web of gloom, could he see the moving figures of the two ladies who had entered. On an impulse, he turned into the magazzino by which he was standing.

Who was the owner of the curio shop on the other side? They did not know. What was his name? They could not say? Had he been there long?

Not so very long. About a year. He was an Englishman, but he spoke Italian. He lived in Venice. They had heard some say in the _Rio Marin_. He was not used to the trade. It was quite true that he did not like to sell his things. They had been told he was a painter--but that was only what people said.

That was sufficient. They needed to say no more. This answered the questions that John had put that morning to his mother. His father could no longer sell his pictures. In a rush of light, he saw the whole story, far more pathetic to him than he had imagined with his study in brown.

One by one, they were selling the treasures they had collected. Now, he understood the meaning of those empty night-caps which Claudina carried away with her every evening. They said the things were broken; they had said it with nervous little glances at each other and then at Claudina.

At the time, he had read those glances to mean that it was Claudina who had broken them. But no--it was not Claudina. This was the work of the heavy, the ruthless hand of cruel circ.u.mstance in which the frailest china and the sternest metal can be crushed into the dust of destruction.

In a moment, as it was all made clear, John found the tears smarting in his eyes. As he stood there in the little shop opposite, he painted the whole picture with rapid strokes of the imagination.

The day had come when his father could no longer sell his pictures.

Then the two white heads had nodded together of an evening before Claudina came in with the night-caps. More emphatically than ever, they had exclaimed--"You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina?" And Claudina, laying the box on the table, beginning to take out the night-caps and place forth the treasures before she tucked them up, would vouchsafe the answering nod of her head. At last, one evening, watching the Dresden figure being put to bed, his father had thought of the way out of the difficulty.

They had not decided upon it at once. Such determinations as these come from the head alone and have to pa.s.s before a stern tribunal of the heart before license is given them. He could just imagine how bitter a tribunal that had been; how inflexibly those two brave hearts had sat in judgment upon so hard a matter; how reluctantly in the end they had given their consent.

Then, with the moment once pa.s.sed, the license once granted, John could see them so vividly, questioning whether they should tell him, their decision that it would not be wise, his father fearing that it would lessen his esteem, his mother dreading that he would feel called upon to help them. Finally, that first day, when the Treasure Shop had been opened and his father, the artist, the man of temperament, with all the finest perceptions and sensibilities that human nature possesses, had gone to business.

So truly he could see the moment of his departure. Nothing had been said. He had just taken the little old white-haired lady in his arms and kissed her. That was all. It might have been that he was merely going out, as he had quietly said that morning, to see about the framing of a picture. No one would ever have thought that he was about to pa.s.s through the ordeal of becoming a shop-keeper, because, in his old age he had failed as an artist.

All this, incident by incident, he painted, a sequence of pictures in his mind.

Presently the curtains in the shop-window stirred again. John's eyes steadied, his lips parted as he held his breath. The Dresden figure appeared, like a marionet making its bow to the public. Then followed the head and shoulders of his father. There was a smile on his face, a glow of genial satisfaction. They had not bought it. The price had been too much. That little Dresden figure, playing upon its lute, decoyed many a customer into the Treasure Shop, with its living tunes; but like a will-o'-the-wisp, it always evaded them. Back it danced again into the fore-front of the window where the old ivory chess-men stood stolidly listening to its music of enchantment. You might almost have seen them nodding their heads in approval.

John felt a lump rise quickly in his throat. He knew just what his father was feeling; he knew just what was in his mind. He realised all his sense of relief when the Dresden figure made its reappearance. If it had not come back into the window, he could not have restrained his desire to march into the shop and repeat every word of the conversation to which he had listened.

But it was safe once more and, with a breath of satisfaction, he moved away towards the _Rialto_, his head hanging as he walked.

That afternoon at tea, with the little cups that had no handles, he made no comment on his father's absence. The little old white-haired lady was trembling that he would ask, but he said not a word.

Only that evening, after Claudina had come in for her ceremony and he was saying good-night, he put both hands on his father's shoulders and, impulsively drawing him forward, kissed his forehead. Then he left the room.

The two old people sat staring at each other after he had gone. What did it mean? Why had he done it?

"Why, he hasn't kissed you since he was eight years old," said his mother.

The old gentleman shook his head thoughtfully--"No--I can't understand it. Don't you remember that first evening he refused, when I bent down to kiss him and he blushed, drew back a little and held out his hand?"

She smiled.

"You were hurt about it at first," she reminded him.

"Yes--but then when you said--'John's thinking about becoming a man'--of course, it seemed natural enough then. And he's never done it since--till now. I wonder why."

The old gentleman went to bed very, very silent that night, and long after Claudina had taken away the lamp, he could feel John's lips burning on his forehead and the blood burning in his cheeks. Something had happened. He could not quite understand what it was. Some change had taken place. He felt quite embarra.s.sed; but he fell asleep before he could realise that he was feeling just what John had felt that night when he was eight years old. That was what had happened--that was the change. The child was now father to the man--and the man was feeling the first embarra.s.sment of the child--so the last link had been forged between the irrevocable past and the eternal present.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE CANDLE FOR ST. ANTHONY

If you know aught of the history of Venice; if the strenuous efforts of all those little lives that have done their work and lived their day in that vast mult.i.tude of human ephemera should have any meaning for you; if, in the flames of colour that have glowed and vanished in the brazier of Time, you can see faces and dream dreams of all that romantic story, then it is no wasting of a sunny morning to sit alone upon the _Piazetta_, your face turned towards _San Giorgio Maggiore_ and, with the sun glinting upwards from the glittering water, weave your visions of great adventure in the diaphanous mist of light.

It was in such a way as this that John was spending one day when he could not work, when the little old white-haired lady was busy with Claudina over the duties of the house, when his father had departed upon that engrossing errand of seeing to the framing of a picture.

The sun was a burning disc, white hot in a smelter's furnace. A few white sails of cloud lay becalmed, inert, asleep in a sky of turquoise.